


eight, five, twelve

by sun_fm (traceylane)



Category: Buzzfeed: Worth It (Web Series)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-05
Updated: 2018-06-05
Packaged: 2019-05-18 12:10:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14852498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/traceylane/pseuds/sun_fm
Summary: just another new york episode.





	eight, five, twelve

Andrew's bag dropped to the floor with a soft _thump_ , a few feet in front of the door, next to a neat row of sneakers. He slipped off his own and set them at the end before stepping further into the apartment.

“You already moved your shoes?”

Steven locked the door behind Adam, then shook off his jacket and hung it on one of a line of white plastic EZ-Hooks that were serving as his temporary coat rack. “Yeah. Not all of them, though.”

“This isn’t all of them?”

“I like shoes!”

They were in New York, resting for the night before another meal of Peking duck. Inga had checked into a hotel room at a four star Marriott downtown, but for Adam and Andrew, Steven had offered a stay at his new apartment in Brooklyn.

Andrew reached around the corner that separated the doorway from the rest of the apartment, searching with his hand for a light switch. Steven came up behind him, close enough that Andrew felt him warm against his back. “Having some trouble, there?” he quipped, then slipped his arm just below Andrew’s, his fingers easily stretching those extra inches to flick on the light as if he’d done it a hundred times before.

The apartment was illuminated by a couple of fixtures glowing from the ceiling with a warm yellow light that didn’t quite reach the corners of the room. It was sparsely furnished, with a gray fabric sofa in front of the TV, which sat on a stand lined up against the wall.

“I’m taking the couch,” Adam stated, stepping up to it and flopping his body over the side, landing gracelessly face down on the cushions.

“Wait, A-Adam—” Steven held out his arm like a concerned mother, but their cameraman was already asleep, wiped out from another long day of trailing behind a couple of fools.

“He didn’t even take his glasses off,” Andrew said, laughing.

Steven sighed. “I’ll get him a blanket.” He retreated through a door to the left, leaving Andrew alone with his hands in his pockets. His eyes followed Steven as he went, looking away quickly before he could get a glimpse of what he assumed was the inside of Steven’s room.

Instead he looked around, running his hand along the wall as he padded around the room in his socks. He stepped into Steven’s small kitchen, with its black stone countertops and electric stove. There were already dishes in the sink—a cereal bowl and a spoon, a rice pot out of its cooker, filled with clouded water.

There was a tall stack of boxes, still taped closed, next to a large window on the opposite side of the room. The window was circular, and extruded far enough into the wall that he could sit on it like a ledge. Andrew could see lights through the glass. He could have mistaken the skyline for Los Angeles, if he hadn’t stepped any closer.

He could tell this window was what had convinced Steven to live there. It was very like him—modern, open, Instagram-ready. It probably flooded the room with light in the daytime.

No, it wasn’t very hard to imagine Steven living there.

He heard a crashing noise coming from Steven’s room, followed by a soft _ow_.

The door was slightly ajar, and Andrew finally took the liberty of peering in, careful not to open it any wider than it already was. Steven’s walls were painted pastel blue.

“Steven?”

Steven jumped, the comforter tangled up in his arms dragging on the hardwood. “Oh, Andrew!”

“Yeah, I’m still here,” Andrew drawled.

“I, uh, forgot I put books on top of my sheets and stuff.” Andrew scanned the area near Steven’s feet, saw ancient test prep study aids from the mid-2000s, a book of poetry by an author with a Japanese name, a thick paperback he could remember Steven buying from a store at the Seattle airport, all strewn across the floor like a small tornado had swept through.

“You’re a mess.”

“I know. Are you going to come in?”

Andrew, for some reason, hesitated. “Sure,” he said, hoping his pause hadn’t been too noticeable.

The room looked considerably more lived in than the rest of the apartment. There was a desk, messy as the one Steven had occupied in LA, in front of a wheeled chair filled with rejected outfits; a half open closet with mirrors for doors, right next to a clothes rack seemingly reserved for jackets exclusively; Steven’s bed, so meticulously made you could bounce a quarter off of its monochrome gray sheets.

Above the headboard was a row of pictures, clipped onto a steel string that hung from the wall. Andrew saw his face one, two, three times—four, if that group photo was from where he thought it was.

“Welcome to Casa de Steven!” Steven smiled brightly, raising his free arm like he was presenting a sword swallower at the circus.

Andrew realized he had never been inside Steven’s room in Los Angeles, and wondered if his being there now was actually that intimate, or if his mind was playing tricks on him.

“You have too many pillows.”

Steven looked appalled, and Andrew smiled, breathing easier after breaking the tension that he wasn’t even sure was real.

“I like to be comfortable, okay? I appreciate softness.”

“I’m genuinely surprised you haven’t suffocated in your sleep.”

Steven balled up the comforter he was holding and threw it at Andrew, who caught it only a little clumsily.

“Go put that on Adam.”

“What, no pillow? You can’t go with only nine-hundred and ninety-nine pillows for just one night?”

Steven threw a pillow, and this time Andrew caught it deftly with one hand. His shoulders shook with laughter.

“What’s so funny?”

“I feel like you were just possessed by a thirteen-year-old girl at a slumber party. …Wait, Steven, no!”

Andrew rushed out of the room, grinning, and closed the door behind him quick enough to hear another pillow slam against it. He grabbed onto the door knob and pulled, feeling it jiggle as Steven struggled to turn it.

“Dude, come on!” Steven was laughing, almost breathlessly, and Andrew had his face pressed into the bedding in his arms to keep himself from being too loud. “Open the door!”

“Okay, truce, Steven. Truce?”

Eventually, the knob stopped moving. “... Fine, truce.”

Andrew took his hand off of the door, and Steven swung it open, slowly. He stepped into the living room, his cheeks pink. “I hate you,” he said, in the way someone could only say it if the opposite was indisputably true. So Andrew only laughed again, hardly conscious of his hand reaching up to push some of Steven’s wild hair out of his eyes.

Mid-movement, he caught Steven staring at the fingers at his face. He brought them back down with a clearing of his throat. They were no longer laughing, but the hard thumping in his chest and ears hadn’t slowed.

“Blanket for Adam,” he said slowly, awkwardly.

Steven scratched the back of his neck, looking down at his feet. “Right.”

—

Steven finished arranging the couch, lastly using two fingers to remove Adam’s glasses delicately and place them on the TV stand. Andrew was at the window, looking out at the city with folded arms. Steven joined him on his left side.

“Isn’t this cool? You can see the bridge!”

Andrew could. “If you squint.”

Steven elbowed him lightly. “Come on. Be happy for me.” It was in jest, but there was something wanting in it.

Andrew looked at him, his face blank. Then he said, with complete sincerity, “I _am_ happy for you, Steven.”

It was so genuine that Steven was taken aback. “ … Oh. Thank you.”

Andrew didn’t seem to be listening. The traffic passed steadily below, the city still bustling and lively despite the hour.

It had been too quiet for too long when Steven murmured, “It’s not that big of a change.”

“ … I know.”

“The taping schedule will stay pretty much the same.”

“I know.”

“I’ll probably be in LA for work a lot, anyway—”

“Steven, I _know_.”

“—so we’ll still see each other. I’ll, uh… I’ll still see you.”

Neither of them turned their faces away from the window. Their arms touched while they stood, side-by-side.

“I know you will, Steven,” Andrew said, quietly.

Another pause. Adam shifted in his sleep, snoring softly.

Andrew, inevitably, went on. “...Especially when you come crawling back to LA after the city chews you up and spits you out.”

“Yep, there it is,” Steven said, shaking his head. Andrew bit down on his lip, trying not to laugh.

—

After weighing his options, including the bathtub, Andrew slept in Steven’s room. Steven let him take the bed, and fell asleep surprisingly quickly on his floor.

Andrew stared up at the ceiling, still but wide awake. He checked his phone periodically as the minutes, hours ticked by. 2AM. 3AM. 4AM. The sky began to brighten behind the thin curtains over Steven’s window. He blamed it on jetlag.

—

The season wrapped up, and the four of them said their goodbyes in the snow in front of JFK.

Steven hugged Inga and Adam amicably, and went to Andrew last.

“Send us a postcard,” he joked. But Steven only put his arms around his shoulders and held him tightly.

“See you soon,” he said, only to Andrew.

“See you,” Andrew answered, his voice low and muffled by Steven’s scarf.

The moment passed, and the flight back home blurred by.

—

There was a bit of buzz in the Los Angeles office a few weeks later. Andrew, disinterested as ever, walked to his desk with his headphones on and a coffee in hand.

A postcard was propped up between the rows of keys on his keyboard. His smile grew as he examined the design on the front. _Greetings From Los Angeles._

“There, satisfied? It was ninety-nine cents at LAX.”

He looked up and saw Steven sitting on the tabletop of the desk next to his, his feet dangling over the floor, kicking back and forth like he was a six-year-old eating ice cream on a park bench. The satisfied look on his face gave Andrew a good idea of how happy he must have seemed. Weirdly he didn’t care, though he still answered in sarcastic monotone. “Quite the bargain.”

Steven popped onto his feet. “Do you want to get breakfast? There’s a new cafe on Pacific.”

Andrew raised an eyebrow. “Is this for work?”

“Nope. Just you.”

—

Steven drove, as always. They bought two different pastries and shared, as always. Steven would leave soon, Andrew knew, but he would be back, as always.

**Author's Note:**

> I KNOW that everyone is getting hella emo bc steven might be moving to nyc?? this is my take lmao, i dont know if steven was already living there when they wrapped s4 but when they had that overnight time skip in the episode i was like HMMM
> 
> throwback to when steven was hella happy to be in new york and andrew said that it's nice until it eats you alive, good luck to my sweet cali boy. OBVIOUSLY I have my own personal thoughts about his lifestyle that i've projected onto this fic lmao
> 
> idk they definitely give me the vibe that they're the kind of couple that will never address their inexplicable feelings about each other BUT will still sort of act on them nawmean


End file.
